The suit relates to a dismissed case against a man accused of hitting a Delaware State Police horse in Dewey.

In late May, a disorderly crowd resulted in several arrests. That included Philadelphia man Gavin Coco, 34, who was accused of hitting a police horse. Those charges have been dismissed(Photo: Submitted)

After a judge dismissed the criminal case against him, a man once accused of hitting a police horse in Dewey Beach has filed a federal lawsuit against three Delaware officers.

Gavin Coco, 34, who previously resided in Philadelphia but now lives in Maryland, was one of at least four people arrested in connection with a May 2018 incident in which police said officers were surrounded by a "disorderly and angry crowd."

He was initially charged with offensive touching of a law enforcement officer after police alleged he struck a Delaware State Police Mounted Patrol Unit horse.

Court records show Sussex County Court of Common Pleas Judge Rosemary Beauregard dismissed the case with prejudice for "illegally charging" Coco. Coco's lawyer at the time, Ronald Phillips, told Delaware Online the ruling related to offensive touching of a horse not being supported by law.

"We charged him with what we thought was correct at the time and from that point forward, it was in the attorney general’s hands," Dewey Beach Police Department spokesman Sgt. Cliff Dempsey said in the October report regarding the case's dismissal.

On Nov. 30, attorney Stephen P. Norman, who Delmarva Now has reached out to, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware on Coco's behalf. It alleges three officers involved in the incident — Delaware State Police employees Josh Dear and Helen Zane, and a Dewey Beach police officer identified in the lawsuit as Patrolman Lovins — violated Coco's Fourth and 14th Amendment rights.

It includes allegations of unlawful detention, use of excessive force and fabrication of evidence. The complaint not only seeks a jury trial but compensatory, nominal and punitive damages as well as lost wages and reasonable attorney fees.

In response to a request for comment regarding the lawsuit, Delaware State Police spokesperson Cpl. Melissa Jaffe wrote in an emailed statement that the Dewey Beach Police Department had forwarded a complaint about the incident involving Coco to DSP's Internal Affairs unit.

"The Delaware State Police takes all citizen complaints seriously and will investigate them, however, we do not discuss personnel matters/issues," she wrote Monday.

Dewey Beach Town Manager Scott Koenig wrote in an email Monday that the town had received a copy of the complaint and contacted QBE Speciality Insurance Co.

QBE hired the law firm of Marks, O'Neill, O'Brien, Doherty & Kelly to defend the town, which has no further comment at this time, he wrote.

The lawsuit

The complaint states Coco and his friends were walking along Route 1 in Dewey Beach on May 27 when they noticed a disturbance involving police officers in a parking lot about 40-50 feet away.

Coco's friend began filming a woman's arrest at about 1:38 a.m. "because he felt unnecessary force was being used," according to documents, but Zane then yelled for them to be removed from the area.

CLOSE

A Dewey Beach visitor decided to shoot this video of an arrest in late May, which then became a disorderly crowd and led to his friend's arrest.
Delaware News Journal

Dear approached Coco on horseback from behind, the complaint shows, and struck him with the horse, knocking Coco back several feet.

Documents state Dear "rams" Coco a second time with the horse, which stepped on Coco's foot, ripping off the toenail of his big toe and causing a large gash as he started falling toward a police vehicle.

Zane joined Dear on her own horse, according to documents, in pushing Coco toward the police vehicle. Documents say she then yelled that he touched her horse and grabbed his shirt while pushing him toward other officers who were approaching to take him into custody.

Zane's incident report, drafted June 1, alleges Coco moved around Dear's horse to approach her, ignored her commands to leave the area and punched her horse in the left side of the neck, according to the complaint.

The complaint also shows Lovins, the officer who arrested Coco and took him for processing, wrote in a report the day after the incident that he saw Coco move quickly and aggressively as he struck the horse's shoulder with his own shoulder.

However, the complaint deems both Zane and Lovins' statements "materially false." In addition, it indicates that based "upon information and belief" the Dewey Beach Police Department had surveillance video at the time the arrests were publicized showing the horse wasn't punched.

Phillips told Delaware Online one of the reasons the Sussex County judge found prejudice in the case was because of a delay in releasing the surveillance video to him even though screenshots were made public within days of the arrest.

After what the complaint calls a "false claim" attributed to Dewey Beach police was published by various media at the local, regional and national level, documents state Coco was fired from his job and shut down his social media because he had received "harassing and threatening posts."